Eating Utensils

Unless you happen to be some sort of barbarian the odds are pretty high that you eat with utensils of some sort. So without further ado, I'm going to rate some common eating utensils. Enjoy.

Dinner Fork: Your reasonably large solid fork, this is a great piece of flatware. I know it's primarily supposed to be the fork you use to eat your meat and potatoes, but it's far too versatile to be limited to just the main course. A sturdy fork is a wildly useful utensil that no kitchen should be without. Lots of them. Good.

Salad Fork: This is something I don't get. Why should you have a different fork for salad than for other stuff? How is salad so special? And is there a different fork for caesar salad than for garden salad? How about pasta salad? How about having excess forks taking up dinner table real estate is a Bad idea?

Desert Fork: We've already covered the superfluous fork issue, and now there's another. I suppose I can sort of understand not using the same fork to eat steak and then to eat lemon meringue pie, but it seems a trifle unnecessary. And desert forks tend to be a little small, especially if you've got big hands. A big hand holding a tiny fork falls somewhere between the ridiculous and the Ugly.

Teaspoon: Ostensibly this is a spoon to stir tea, which is a really, really specific task if you ask me. Especially when you aren't a tea drinker. I use a teaspoon for pretty much everything spoonish — cereal, stirring drinks other than tea, ice cream, and frequently for soup (of course, when I say frequently, I mean rarely, since I hardly ever eat any soup). I like teaspoons. They're Good.

Soup Spoon: Another rather specifically named utensil, these are basically teaspoons on steroids. They're bigger, heavier, and fit into a different spot in the cutlery tray than their diminutive brothers, and I'm really not a big fan of them. Some people might say I have a big mouth, but I find that a soup spoon is a little too large for me. Maybe that's because your supposed to slurp your soup off the spoon instead of actually letting it in your mouth, but isn't the noise of slurping soup just a little bit Ugly?

Knife: Yes, I know, there are lots of different knives, but I'm referring to a dull kitchen knife here, the sort that one might use to spread marmalade on toast, or to cut a baked potato. Not really a good thing to hold up a 7-11 with, or to deal with a thick piece of meat. Of course, you don't need a particularly sharp knife to spread peanut butter, and these do a Good job.

Steak Knife: When I was growing up we never had steak knives. Considering how often (never) we had steak that's not particularly surprising, but now that I've moved my roommates have steak knives, and I can't get over just how cool these particular utensils are. Sharp enough to cut most anything that's going to be on your dinner plate and small enough to cut something on said plate without being awkward, steak knives are one of those things much like broadband Internet access, paying with debit cards, and the microwave that quite frankly makes you wonder how life was possible without them. All kinds of Good.

Chopsticks: I trust everyone is familiar with the expression "leave the best for last." Well, I didn't. I don't like chopsticks. I'm offending hundreds of millions of Asians here, but chopsticks are awkward, slow to use, and inefficient. I've tried to use them a number of times with little to no success. Why have an eating utensil that has a learning curve? There's no learning curve with the fork. You pick the food up with the fork and stick it in your mouth. Simple. Chopsticks are Bad. Bad!